e in London as though I had been buried for a century. A
man makes himself really useful, but a woman can never do that."

"All those general rules mean nothing," said Phineas. "I should try
it."

"No, Phineas. I know better than that. It would only be
disappointment. I hardly think that after all you ever did understand
when it was that I broke down utterly and marred my fortunes for
ever."

"I know the day that did it."

"When I accepted him?"

"Of course it was. I know that, and so do you. There need be no
secret between us."

"There need be no secret between us certainly,--and on my part there
shall be none. On my part there has been none."

"Nor on mine."

"There has been nothing for you to tell,--since you blurted out your
short story of love that day over the waterfall, when I tried so hard
to stop you."

"How was I to be stopped then?"

"No; you were too simple. You came there with but one idea, and you
could not change it on the spur of the moment. When I told you that
I was engaged you could not swallow back the words that were not yet
spoken. Ah, how well I remember it. But you are wrong, Phineas. It
was not my engagement or my marriage that has made the world a blank
for me." A feeling came upon him which half-choked him, so that he
could ask her no further question. "You know that, Phineas."

"It was your marriage," he said, gruffly.

"It was, and has been, and still will be my strong, unalterable,
unquenchable love for you. How could I behave to that other man with
even seeming tenderness when my mind was always thinking of you, when
my heart was always fixed upon you? But you have been so simple, so
little given to vanity,"--she leaned upon his arm as she spoke,--"so
pure and so manly, that you have not believed this, even when I told
you. Has it not been so?"

"I do not wish to believe it now."

"But you do believe it? You must and shall believe it. I ask for
nothing in return. As my God is my judge, if I thought it possible
that your heart should be to me as mine is to you, I could have
put a pistol to my ear sooner than speak as I have spoken." Though
she paused for some word from him he could not utter a word. He
remembered many things, but even to her in his present mood he could
not allude to them;--how he had kissed her at the Falls, how she had
bade him not come back to the house because his presence to her was
insupportable; how she had again encouraged him to come, and had
t